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Ukraine

FOCUS: Russia-Ukraine War

How Putin Reads Tolstoy: The Case For A Hard Line Against Russian Culture

From ballet to opera to classic literature, Russia has turned its culture into an instrument for its own expansion. The West must fight back, Ukraine's culture minister Oleksandr Tkachenko writes in an op-ed in German daily Die Welt. It's time to stop supporting Russian artists and seek out Ukrainians instead.

-OpEd-

KYIV — At first glance, it seems only a small administrative act: on Jan. 25, Vladimir Putin changed the mission of his country's state cultural policy. Its task now includes "protecting society from external ideological expansion."

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Behind this change lies the idea that there are "unfriendly states involved in activities aimed at undermining the cultural sovereignty of the Russian Federation." What is at stake is nothing less than the "protection of historical truth."

Culture is thus a tool and even a weapon in the hands of the state. Russia actively uses it to promote its interests — from making Russian ballet and other symbols of Russian culture (Leo Tolstoy, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Piotr Tchaikovsky, Dmitri Shostakovich) popular, to protecting the rights of Russian speakers abroad.

It is time to do something about this.

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Maryinka As Memory: How A City In Ukraine Has Been Blown Out Of Existence

Citizens of the now destroyed Ukrainian city of Maryinka are left struggling to remember what their town used to look like.

As Yulia Semendyaeva looks at a photo of the Ukrainian city of Maryinka, the place where she was born and lived 29 of the 30 years of her life, she cannot recognize a single street.

"The ponds are the only things that are still where I remember them," she says.

As Yulia’s hometown had become unrecognizable, the world, for the first time, was beginning to notice it.

When people began to share photos of the completely destroyed city, where seemingly not one building remained untouched, the Russian military boasted of the "impressive" results of what it calls the "denazification" project in Ukraine.

Today, Maryinka only exists on maps. Its streets still have names. But in reality, it is all only rubble.

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The Only Path To Peace With Russia? A New Iron Curtain On Ukraine's Eastern Border

With a decisive deal with Putin out of the question, the only way to create a lasting peace is to recreate some fundamental dynamics of the Cold War.

-Analysis-

BERLIN — Volodymyr Zelensky was allowed three minutes, but he spoke for 20. In his speech at the G20 summit in November last year, the Ukrainian president laid out, in greater detail than ever before, how peace with Russia can be achieved – and maintained.

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His main point: “Ukraine is not a member of any of the alliances. And Russia was able to start this war precisely because Ukraine remained in the grey zone – between the Euro-Atlantic world and Russian imperialism. Now, we do not have any security assurances either ... We need effective security assurances.”

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz echoed these words in parliament recently. “At the G20 summit, President Zelensky set out his suggestions for how to achieve a lasting, fair peace,” Scholz said. “We will help Ukraine to achieve such a peace. That is why we are talking to Kyiv and other partners about future security assurances for Ukraine.”

Scholz did not specify precisely what kind of “security assurances” he meant. But Zelensky was very specific in his G20 speech.

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From The Trenches Of Avdiivka, Ukraine's Hell On Earth

Journalists from Ukrainska Pravda report directly from the trenches near Avdiivka, one of the oldest settlements in the eastern Donetsk region of Ukraine, where troops are facing near-constant Russian fire.

“Get down!”

Machine gun fire whistling overhead is interrupted by the shout of a combat medic named Petro. Five people, including three soldiers and two journalists from Ukrainian publication Ukrainska Pravda fall to the snow.

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The sound of ringing bullets seemed distant to Petro's team and, as those under fire always hope, didn't come too close to hitting.

“Are you all good?” Petro asks after a few seconds.

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FOCUS: Russia-Ukraine War
Oleksandr Demchenko

Nuclear Weapons In Belarus — Why It May Have Been Xi Jinping's Idea

To trace Moscow's decision to transfer nuclear weapons to Belarus, we may need to look to Beijing — and the recent summit of Xi Jinping-Vladimir Putin

-Analysis-

Vladimir Putin has decided to raise the nuclear stakes even further — to violate the Non-Proliferation Treaty by announcing his intention to deploy tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus.

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Geopolitics
Roman Anin

"No F**king Future!" FSB Verifies Leaked Audio Of Putin Pals Bashing War

What does Russia's ruling class really think of Putin? A leaked audio recording of Russian producer Iosif Prigozhin and Russian billionaire ex-senator Farhad Akhmedov criticizing Putin has been verified by Russian intel service FSB, offering a peak into the anger toward the Kremlin's war.

A leaked recording in which influential Russians close to President Vladimir Putin trash the leader and his handling of the war in Ukraine has been confirmed as authentic. This rare window into the opaque world of Russian oligarchs confirms the suspicion that the country's wealthy and powerful have grave concerns about the Kremlin

In the expletive-laden conversation, successful Russian music producer Iosif Prigozhin and billionaire and former Senator Farhad Akhmedov, strong public supporters of the war, can be heard describing Russian leaders as "f**king criminals" who have "f**ked up everything."

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The recording which first appeared on social media on March 7, but it wasn't until Sunday when a high-level source in the Russian intelligence services had confirmed to independent Russian media Vazhnyye Istorii (Important Stories) that that the recording was real.

"The recording of the conversation between Prigozhin and Akhmedov is authentic. The FSB leadership held a meeting the other day and ordered their subordinates to take action,” commented a FSB source.

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FOCUS: Russia-Ukraine War
Alfred Hackensberger

What's Driving Chechen Fighters To The Frontlines Of Ukraine

Thousands of foreign soldiers are fighting alongside Ukraine. German daily Die Welt met a Chechen battalion to find out why they are fighting.

KRAMATORSK — The house is full of soldiers. On the floor, there are wooden boxes filled with mountains of cartridges and ammunition belts for heavy machine guns. Dozens of hand grenades are lying around. Hanging on the wall are two anti-tank weapons.

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"These are from Spain," says the commanding officer, introducing himself as Maga. "Short for Make America Great Again," he adds with a laugh.

Only 29 years old, Maga is in charge of the Dudayev Chechen battalion, which has taken up quarters somewhere on the outskirts of the city of Kramatorsk in eastern Ukraine.

The commander appears calm and confident in the midst of the hustle and bustle of final preparations for the new mission in Bakhmut, only about 30 kilometers away. The Ukrainian army command has ordered the Chechen special forces unit to reinforce the town in the Donbas, which has been embattled for months.

Bakhmut, which used to have 70,000 inhabitants, is to be kept at all costs. It is already surrounded on three sides by Russian troops and can only be reached via a paved road and several tracks through the terrain. Day after day, artillery shells rain down on Ukrainian positions and the Russian infantry keeps launching new attacks.

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FOCUS: Russia-Ukraine War
Anatolii Schara

Drones, Tablets, Cigarettes: How Ukraine's Reconnaissance Warriors Pinpoint The Enemy

Near the embattled city of Vuhledar, Ukrainian artillery reconnaissance units detect enemy positions. They work with drones, tablets and satellite internet — and they are often the last line of defense from a Russian onslaught.

VUHLEDAR — It's early in the morning, just before dawn. The artillery reconnaissance units are in Kurakhove, a city in Donetsk oblast, to pick up the equipment supplies that have just arrived from Kyiv: drones, tablets, portable solar power generators and Internet hardware for connection to the Starlink satellite system.

Because of the tremendous strain on the equipment, it needs to be constantly replaced. Everything is loaded into all-terrain vehicles, then they head toward the fiercely contested city of Vuhledar, in southeastern Ukraine, 60 kilometers from Donetsk.

"The task of artillery reconnaissance is to locate and fix enemy targets and to conduct artillery observation," explains commander Zeus, who only gives his combat name, in line with the policy of the Ukrainian army.

Artillery fire is mainly indirect. The target is not visible from the gun, which is usually located four to ten kilometers from the front line.

On the car radio, the music ends, the presenter announces in a solemn voice that Ukrainian troops are retreating in panic from Vuhledar. The men are unimpressed; they know that only Russian stations work in the frontline area.

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Russia
Irina Dolinina, Polina Uzhvak

Exclusive: Russian Leak Reveals Extent Of Country’s Anti-War Protests That Kremlin Was Hiding

Independent Russian media Vazhnyye Istorii has obtained a major data leak from the top Kremlin information agency that reveals the scale and extent of anti-war protests across the Russian Federation.

Since the beginning of the invasion of Ukraine, Russian government information agencies have repeatedly published public opinion polls showing that the overwhelming majority of Russians support Vladimir Putin's domestic and foreign policies, especially the war against Ukraine which is officially referred to as the special “military operation to denazify Ukraine and liberate Donbas.”

However, an unprecedented large-scale leak of data from Roskomnadzor, the Russian federal propaganda and surveillance agency, shows that protest movements in 2022 were expanding across much of the Russian Federation.

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FOCUS: Russia-Ukraine War
Philipp Fritz

Inside The Polish-Led Push To Send Fighter Jets To Ukraine – Bypassing Germany

A bloc of eastern European countries has distanced themselves from Western Europe — Germany in particular — by sending Soviet era jets to Ukraine, part of growing push to supply the country with Western-made fighter jets.

Following Poland’s lead, Slovakia has now declared its plans to send MiG-29 fighter jets to Ukraine. The U.S. may well have been kept informed of the decisions, but Warsaw did not tell the German government. Some Eastern European allies are distancing themselves from Western Europe. And there’s a good reason for that.

Once again Poland is pushing ahead with supplying weapons to Ukraine. “We can say that we will shortly be sending MiG fighter jets to Ukraine,” said President Andrzej Duda on Thursday in Warsaw, during a visit from the Czech President Petr Pavel – announcing it almost in passing, as seems to be Duda’s way.

Duda went one step further than his Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, who only the day before had set out a timeline for Poland to provide jets. He said it would take four to six weeks, then the President and commander-in-chief announced a shorter timeline of only a few days.

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FOCUS: Russia-Ukraine War
Anna Zafesova

Don't Underestimate How Much More Putin Needs Xi Than Xi Needs Putin

Chinese President Xi Jinping's visit to Moscow was a much-needed favor Vladimir Putin. But make no mistake, Beijing is there to serve Beijing — and holds virtually all the cards.

-Analysis-

Chinese president Xi Jinping’s much-anticipated visit to Moscow begins with a diplomatic mystery. In the first minutes of formal greetings at the Kremlin, Xi congratulated Russian President Vladimir Putin: “Russia has achieved significant successes under your leadership. Next year you have elections coming up, and I am convinced that the Russian people will give you their support.”

The Russian president’s candidacy in 2024, officially, is one of the biggest mysteries in Russian politics, as Putin has not yet declared his intentions, even though it is extremely unlikely that he would voluntarily move out of the Kremlin, and even less so after amending the constitution in 2020 to allow himself to enjoy two more six-year terms.

Still, the fact that Russians learned that their president will run again from Xi is extraordinary enough that Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters they had "misunderstood."

According to Moscow, the Chinese president said more generally that his Russian “friend” would continue to be supported by Russians next year.

It was hardly a gaffe — not at this level of politics, where every blink is weighed and measured. Maybe it was a translation error, or a courtesy Xi wanted to show Putin, in response to his host's compliments. Putin's welcome speech included the phrase "We envy you a little bit” (for China’s rapid pace of progress), which must have truly pained the Russian leader to say.

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FOCUS: Russia-Ukraine War
Anna Akage

That Man In Mariupol: Is Putin Using A Body Double To Avoid Public Appearances?

Putin really is meeting with Xi in Moscow — we know that. But there are credible experts saying that the person who showed up in Mariupol the day before was someone else — the latest report that the Russian president uses a doppelgänger for meetings and appearances.

Have no doubt, the Vladimir Putin we’re seeing alongside Xi Jinping this week is the real Vladimir Putin. But it’s a question that is being asked after a range of credible experts have accused the Russian president of sending a body double for a high-profile visit this past weekend in the occupied Ukrainian city of Mariupol.

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Reports and conspiracy theories have circulated in the past about the Russian leader using a stand-in because of health or security issues. But the reaction to the Kremlin leader's trip to Mariupol is the first time that multiple credible sources — including those who’ve spent time with him in the past — have cast doubt on the identity of the man who showed up in the southeastern Ukrainian city that Russia took over last spring after a months-long siege.

Russian opposition politician Gennady Gudkov is among those who confidently claim that a Putin look-alike, or rather one of his look-alikes, was in the Ukrainian city.

"Now that there is a war going on, I don't rule out the possibility that someone strongly resembling or disguised as Putin is playing his role," Gudkov said.

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